Draft Plan for a Work on the Modern State

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Note from MECW vol. 4, 1975 :

This draft has no author’s title and is near the beginning of Marx’s Notebook for 1844-1847. The main points of the draft coincide with the points of the subject indexes compiled by Marx as early as the summer of 1843 for his “Kreuznach Notebooks” on world history, including the history of the French Revolution. In resuming his study of these problems after his arrival in Paris in the autumn of w’ n that year, Marx intended to write aHistory of the Convent. For this purpose he compiled a summary of the memoirs of the Jacobin Levasseur (see MECW, Vol. 3). The materials he collected, most of which have not come down to us, were used in part in The Holy Family. It was probably in connection with his plan to write a work on the French Revolution (he did not abandon this idea even in 1845 after his expulsion from Paris to Belgium, as is borne out by a report in theTrier’sche Zeitungof February 6, 1845) that he compiled this draft. In it Marx did not merely reproduce the text of the subject indexes to the “Kreuznach Notebooks”, he made a substantial addition to point 9, adding the words “the fight for the abolition [Aufhebung] of the state and of bourgeois society”, i.e., the fight to abolish the exploiter state and the whole existing system of social-economic relations.

1) The history of the origin of the French Revolution.

The self-conceit of the political sphere — to mistake itself for the ardent state. The attitude of the revolutionaries towards civil society. All elements exist in duplicate form, as civic elements and [those of] the state.

2) The proclamation of the rights of man and the constitution of the state. Individual freedom and public authority.

Freedom, equality and unity. Sovereignty of the people.

3) State and civil society.

4) The representative state and the charter.

The constitutional representative state, the democratic representative state.

5) Division of power. Legislative and executive power.

6) Legislative power and the legislative bodies. Political clubs.

7) Executive power. Centralisation and hierarchy. Centralisation and political civilisation. Federal system and industrialism. State administration and local government.

8') Judicial power and law.

8") Nationality and the people.

9') The political parties.

9") Suffrage, the fight for the abolition of the state and of bourgeois society.

🔍 See also : From The Notebook for 1844-1847.